April 22, 2006--Saturday Story: The West End
The West End
When I arrived at Columbia College as a wretchedly skinny, overgrown, stopped-over freshman, decades ago but just a few years after Jack went on the Road and Allen started to Howl, I skipped orientation and the chance to learn the words to the school anthem, Roar Lion, Roar, and raced right over to Broadway where at a shop that specialized in “collegiate wear” I bought a tweed jacket with leather patches already installed on the sleeves, a pipe, and a beret.
I was all set to join the Beats and knew that, newly outfitted, I would need to find a regular place for myself at the West End Bar, which was just down the street from the Stag Shop. This seemed appropriate to me since I saw the gathering of these cultural accouterments to be essential to the life of the poet. I had hopes that the bartender there might tell me where Allen and Jack had perched; and while puffing on my pipe (you could still smoke in bars) and pitching my beret to just the right angle and blowing the foam off my pint (you could drink at 18), I would be inspired.
I did settle in there, becoming a version of a “regular,” often cutting Comparative Anatomy Lab and my Dogfish dissection (as a backup plan to having my poems published by City Lights in San Francisco, I was a pre-med), drank my beers, sometimes seasoned with tears, and waited in vain for words to come to me.
Though I felt sufficiently hysterical and naked, few did.
* * *
So in pursuit of my alternate plan I devoted myself just enough to my Dogfish’s cranial nerves in an attempt to earn at least what at the time was called “a gentleman’s C.” In fact, I was good enough at dissection that my fish was stolen from the tank in which it was stored between lab sessions. Pre-meds were a competitive lot, seeing themselves in competition with each other for coveted spots in Top-Ten medical schools; and anything they could do to elevate themselves on the grading curve, particularly by lowering yours, was something to which they devoted themselves.
It was a good thing, therefore, that I discovered that the lab’s side door led to the amphitheater classroom where the great Lionel Trilling held forth on the immortals of Modern Literature—Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Kafka, and of course his beloved Freud. If I couldn’t find inspiration at the West End perhaps I could with Trilling.
I would poke away at the dog fish for awhile; and when the lab technician went out for a smoke I would slither through that door and, wrapped in my rubber apron, sit on the steps, taking it all in—less his critical insights than his performance and he strode and gestured in his elegant tweeds (I was clearly right about the clothes), the very embodiment of the Liberal Imagination. If I was not to be Ginsberg, I at least wanted Trilling’s posture.
He was aware of me—not because of anything I might have offered but because of my outfit, hungry look, and the piercing smell of formaldehyde that surrounded me. I noticed him taking note of me, nodding, “It’s OK,” as if he knew what was behind that door and how, if fate had turned out differently for him, this Jewish god of literature might have been found bent over his own Dogfish a few decades earlier, in that very same lab, and someone else would be astride that platform.
Though I found myself drawn more and more toward the study of literature rather than its creation, I did not fail to maintain my status at the West End. Especially since I was at last finding inspiration there—not poetic, alas, but, yes, carnal. For slinking on a stool at the other side of the horseshoe-shaped end of the mahogany bar was a girl all in black—leotard, tights (cut off at the ankle), jewelry, nails, eye shadow, hair, and, most alluringly, beret. All black. If not a muse for poetry for sure one for lust.
She was Lydia Rifflestein from East Paterson, New Jersey and was enrolled at Barnard. She emphasized “enrolled” because she was proud to insist and proclaim that she rarely “attended.” She was training to be a dancer, a modern dancer, and was “taking” (dancer-talk for studying) with Martha Graham. This left her no time for ordinary lectures and recitations. Her life was devoted to learning Graham’s intricate chorography, sequences of movements composed mainly of violent pelvic contractions, which sounded to me, pre-med that I sadly was, very much like endless hours of childbirth. Or perhaps something else, excitingly different, that was still not part of my physical vocabulary.
I managed to summon enough courage to engage this vision in shadows, in my still clumsy way, when I learned who she was taking with. In my feeble attempt to be witty (a highly valued trait of Mr. Trilling’s that I was desperate to acquire), I said, “I thought she was dead.”
“You should be so dead,” Lydia snorted and turned back to her Dance Magazine and Campari and Soda.
From some inner source of resolve, of which I had hitherto been unaware, I pressed on, yet with a stammer, “I know that was stupid. I’ve never known a modern dancer before and couldn’t think of anything witty to say.”
“You have a lot to learn. About both dance and wit. That I can see.”
“I would like to know more about dance. Are you performing as well as taking classes?”
“I take ten classes a week, all either intermediate or advanced. Martha even has me demonstrate and so I’m hoping that she might let me join one of her companies. Not the one that performs in New York. I’m far from that. But I’m good.” She leaned toward me, “Very good.”
I had never known anyone who so unabashedly would claim to be good, much less very good. And who would call someone like Martha Graham Martha. I came from a world of doubt and equivocation, and so I was transfixed.
“Do you think, maybe . . . . “
“Yes, I would like that. In fact, this Saturday night there is a Merce Cunningham concert. I love Merce and for you it would be a good beginning.” And with that she ran off. Actually, danced off. Though with no contractions visible.
Martha and Merce and beginnings. I drew hard on my pipe and adjusted my beret. Allen and Jack and even Lionel could wait!
Of course it came to nothing. Actually, it turned out to be a disaster.
To be continued--
When I arrived at Columbia College as a wretchedly skinny, overgrown, stopped-over freshman, decades ago but just a few years after Jack went on the Road and Allen started to Howl, I skipped orientation and the chance to learn the words to the school anthem, Roar Lion, Roar, and raced right over to Broadway where at a shop that specialized in “collegiate wear” I bought a tweed jacket with leather patches already installed on the sleeves, a pipe, and a beret.
I was all set to join the Beats and knew that, newly outfitted, I would need to find a regular place for myself at the West End Bar, which was just down the street from the Stag Shop. This seemed appropriate to me since I saw the gathering of these cultural accouterments to be essential to the life of the poet. I had hopes that the bartender there might tell me where Allen and Jack had perched; and while puffing on my pipe (you could still smoke in bars) and pitching my beret to just the right angle and blowing the foam off my pint (you could drink at 18), I would be inspired.
I did settle in there, becoming a version of a “regular,” often cutting Comparative Anatomy Lab and my Dogfish dissection (as a backup plan to having my poems published by City Lights in San Francisco, I was a pre-med), drank my beers, sometimes seasoned with tears, and waited in vain for words to come to me.
Though I felt sufficiently hysterical and naked, few did.
* * *
So in pursuit of my alternate plan I devoted myself just enough to my Dogfish’s cranial nerves in an attempt to earn at least what at the time was called “a gentleman’s C.” In fact, I was good enough at dissection that my fish was stolen from the tank in which it was stored between lab sessions. Pre-meds were a competitive lot, seeing themselves in competition with each other for coveted spots in Top-Ten medical schools; and anything they could do to elevate themselves on the grading curve, particularly by lowering yours, was something to which they devoted themselves.
It was a good thing, therefore, that I discovered that the lab’s side door led to the amphitheater classroom where the great Lionel Trilling held forth on the immortals of Modern Literature—Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Kafka, and of course his beloved Freud. If I couldn’t find inspiration at the West End perhaps I could with Trilling.
I would poke away at the dog fish for awhile; and when the lab technician went out for a smoke I would slither through that door and, wrapped in my rubber apron, sit on the steps, taking it all in—less his critical insights than his performance and he strode and gestured in his elegant tweeds (I was clearly right about the clothes), the very embodiment of the Liberal Imagination. If I was not to be Ginsberg, I at least wanted Trilling’s posture.
He was aware of me—not because of anything I might have offered but because of my outfit, hungry look, and the piercing smell of formaldehyde that surrounded me. I noticed him taking note of me, nodding, “It’s OK,” as if he knew what was behind that door and how, if fate had turned out differently for him, this Jewish god of literature might have been found bent over his own Dogfish a few decades earlier, in that very same lab, and someone else would be astride that platform.
Though I found myself drawn more and more toward the study of literature rather than its creation, I did not fail to maintain my status at the West End. Especially since I was at last finding inspiration there—not poetic, alas, but, yes, carnal. For slinking on a stool at the other side of the horseshoe-shaped end of the mahogany bar was a girl all in black—leotard, tights (cut off at the ankle), jewelry, nails, eye shadow, hair, and, most alluringly, beret. All black. If not a muse for poetry for sure one for lust.
She was Lydia Rifflestein from East Paterson, New Jersey and was enrolled at Barnard. She emphasized “enrolled” because she was proud to insist and proclaim that she rarely “attended.” She was training to be a dancer, a modern dancer, and was “taking” (dancer-talk for studying) with Martha Graham. This left her no time for ordinary lectures and recitations. Her life was devoted to learning Graham’s intricate chorography, sequences of movements composed mainly of violent pelvic contractions, which sounded to me, pre-med that I sadly was, very much like endless hours of childbirth. Or perhaps something else, excitingly different, that was still not part of my physical vocabulary.
I managed to summon enough courage to engage this vision in shadows, in my still clumsy way, when I learned who she was taking with. In my feeble attempt to be witty (a highly valued trait of Mr. Trilling’s that I was desperate to acquire), I said, “I thought she was dead.”
“You should be so dead,” Lydia snorted and turned back to her Dance Magazine and Campari and Soda.
From some inner source of resolve, of which I had hitherto been unaware, I pressed on, yet with a stammer, “I know that was stupid. I’ve never known a modern dancer before and couldn’t think of anything witty to say.”
“You have a lot to learn. About both dance and wit. That I can see.”
“I would like to know more about dance. Are you performing as well as taking classes?”
“I take ten classes a week, all either intermediate or advanced. Martha even has me demonstrate and so I’m hoping that she might let me join one of her companies. Not the one that performs in New York. I’m far from that. But I’m good.” She leaned toward me, “Very good.”
I had never known anyone who so unabashedly would claim to be good, much less very good. And who would call someone like Martha Graham Martha. I came from a world of doubt and equivocation, and so I was transfixed.
“Do you think, maybe . . . . “
“Yes, I would like that. In fact, this Saturday night there is a Merce Cunningham concert. I love Merce and for you it would be a good beginning.” And with that she ran off. Actually, danced off. Though with no contractions visible.
Martha and Merce and beginnings. I drew hard on my pipe and adjusted my beret. Allen and Jack and even Lionel could wait!
Of course it came to nothing. Actually, it turned out to be a disaster.
To be continued--
posted by Steven Zwerling at
1:04 PM
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